"Giant" Shi Yuzhu, pitted by friends again?
Is it really "careless dating"?
1
Enforcement of 1.765 billion yuan
Shi Yuzhu, who calls himself a "big idler" on Weibo, can't be idle at all.
On October 7, the news that Shi Yuzhu and Beihai Hongtai Investment Co., Ltd. were forced to 1.765 billion yuan spread, and the case was filed on September 25, and the enforcement court was the Beijing Financial Court.
According to the judgment, Beihai Hongtai Investment Co., Ltd. shall repay to China Minsheng Trust Co., Ltd. more than 1.2 billion yuan in principal, more than 130 million yuan in interest and corresponding liquidated damages, and Shi Yuzhu shall bear joint and several guarantee liability for the principal of more than 990 million yuan, interest of more than 100 million yuan and corresponding liquidated damages.
According to Shanghai Securities News, on October 7, the relevant person in charge of Giant Group responded, "Today's enforcement of external attention is caused by the guarantee at the personal level of Lao Shi and has nothing to do with listed companies." ”
This is not the first time that Shi Yuzhu has been on the hot search for vouching for people.
On September 18, Shi Yuzhu's 114 million yuan equity was frozen, according to Ma Quanzhi, spokesman of Giant Group and head of brand marketing of Giant Network, on social media, it was because Shi Yuzhu helped people guarantee.
According to Yicai, earlier, Shi Yuzhu also provided guarantee for the trust contract signed between Guangzhou Hot Wheels and Minsheng Trust in 2017, and because of the untimely handling of the guarantee incident, it also derived the "Minsheng Trust v. Zhao Wei, Huang Youlong and Shi Yuzhu Guarantee Contract Dispute Case".
The case also appeared on Weibo hot search in October 2021, involving as much as 1.8 billion yuan.
That is, at the end of 2021, when Shi Yuzhu posted on Weibo to congratulate the New Year, he also added "do not vouch for friends".
However, obviously, the sequelae of "indiscriminate" guarantees are not over, and Shi Yuzhu has also suffered enough to give guarantees.
On February 27, 2023, according to a report by Zhongxin Jingwei, Shi Yuzhu said, "As soon as I drank at the wine table, I borrowed money to this person and guaranteed that person, so I lost a lot of money for more than ten years", "Liu Wei (CEO of Giant Network) saw that I couldn't do this, you always caused losses outside, saying that you came to play games, so that you made fewer friends." Okay, I'll come back and play the game. ”
2
Involved in the business dispute of Minsheng Trust channel
The focus of public opinion seems to be mainly on Shi Yuzhu's "making friends", but is this really the case?
Regarding Shi Yuzhu's enforcement by the Beijing Financial Court, CaiLian News found the key information of this incident, that is, the dispute over the channel business of Minsheng Trust.
On August 28, 2017, Minsheng Trust and Beihai VAST signed the "Convertible Debt Investment Agreement", agreeing to establish the "China Minsheng Trust Zhixin No. 381 Beihai VAST Convertible Debt Investment Collective Fund Trust Plan".
As the trustee of the trust plan, Minsheng Trust Company will invest the trust funds under the trust plan in the convertible debts of Beihai VAST Company, and the investment principal shall not exceed 2.5 billion yuan, subject to the actual amount issued.
In the same year, Minsheng Trust and Shi Yuzhu signed the "Guarantee Contract", and Shi Yuzhu mainly played the role of joint and several liability guarantee between Minsheng Trust and Beihai Hongtai.
According to the contract, Beihai VAST was supposed to pay about 110 million yuan in investment income, but 70 million yuan was still unpaid.
However, according to Beihai Hongtai and Shi Yuzhu, in August 2017, it was actually Lu Zhiqiang, the actual controller of Minsheng Trust, who requested the help of Shi Yuzhu, the actual controller of Beihai Hongtai.
The meaning is that Lu Zhiqiang entrusted Beihai Hongtai to borrow money from Minsheng Trust and then invested in Zishi Capital arranged by Lu Zhiqiang.
That is, Beihai Hongtai is a "channel", not a real borrower, in fact, Lu Zhiqiang's left hand to right hand.
However, regarding the channel of funds, Shi Yuzhu's side failed to provide sufficient written proof, so the court still ruled that the lending relationship was established.
Interestingly, a similar situation has emerged in the case of Minsheng Trust v. Zhao Wei, Huang Youlong and Shi Yuzhu over a guarantee contract.
According to Radar Finance, Minsheng Trust uses the 20% equity pledge of Jiante Company held by Giant Investment as an "endorsement" to issue trust plan wealth management products, investors' funds flow into Giant Investment, investors enjoy investment income, and trust companies charge handling fees. After the funds are sufficient, Giant Investment buys back shares and "pays back" to Minsheng Trust.
That is to say, Shi Yuzhu and they are not in vain, help make a channel and guarantee, can also take money, wait for friends to get through the crisis, a win-win situation for both parties.
It is worth noting that Shi Yuzhu of the giant and Lu Zhiqiang of the Minsheng Trust were once members of the Taishan Society. Lu Zhiqiang was also a famous real estate tycoon, worth hundreds of billions.
But Lu Zhiqiang's China Oceanwide has been unable to repay many of its borrowings after it fell into a debt crisis.
Under the pressure of huge debts, friends who used to have money to earn together are now going to court, which is inevitably embarrassing.
3
Back to the game
The "Shi Yuzhu big idler", who should have enjoyed his retirement life in peace, tossed around or officially announced his return to the game.
On the one hand, it may indeed be as Shi Yuzhu said, it is the reason for making too many friends and losing too much money; On the other hand, it may also be related to the corporate development of Giant Network.
After 2018, the performance of Giant Network gradually declined, according to the company's annual reports, from 2018 to 2022, the company's annual revenue fell from 3.78 billion yuan to 2.038 billion yuan, almost halved.
After Shi Yuzhu's return, the company's performance improved.
According to the 2023 half-year report, the company's revenue in the first half of the year was 1.443 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 35.68%; The net profit was 664 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32.95%.
As of the close of trading on October 8, 2023, the share price of Giant Network closed at 12.94 yuan per share, and the company's total market value was 25.94 billion yuan.
However, compared with the peak of 151.828 billion yuan in 2017, it fell by more than 80%.
It is reported that the first thing Shi Yuzhu did after taking office was to urgently stop "Original Journey".
"Original Journey" is a new generation of works in the "Journey" series, from the very beginning of the success of "Journey", "Journey Time Edition", "Journey Nostalgic Edition", "Green Journey", "Journey 2", "Journey 2S", "New Journey" emerge one after another, but it is still impossible to escape the old roads such as heavy liver, heavy krypton, and numerical expansion.
It has been more than 17 years since the birth of "Journey" in April 2006, and it is inevitable that some voices complaining about the giant network "eating old books" will appear.
In October 2022, amid the general contraction of the game track, Giant Network announced the opening of nearly 100 school recruitment positions to the Class of 2023, all serving the "Journey" games.
Combined with the "identification of meta-universe games as one of the directions of long-term layout and the formation of a separate technical product team" proposed in the 2021 annual report of Giant Network, the next focus of Giant Network may be to turn the "journey" into the meta-universe.
But in today's game market, Tencent, NetEase have been entrenched for a long time, and the newly promoted Mihayou and other companies have also made rapid progress, even if the landing of the meta-universe has certain advantages in games, it is not easy for Giant Network to highlight the siege.
If Shi Yuzhu wants to continue to be a "big idler", I am afraid it will be difficult.